UK Ravelry Day 2009

So UK Ravelry Day was last Saturday. It was held in Coventry in Central Hall- and out of Central Hall as most of the stall holders where in a open air market place outside the church. This was a bit unfortunate as it rained and rained and rained.... Not that this put off any of the shoppers but it did mean that everyone got quite soggy. Because of all the rain though I didn't take any photos of the event itself. Even the pockets of my coat where filling up with water by the end of the day and I just wasn't willing to risk getting my lovely brand-spanking new camera all soggy.
Inside the church hall there where several stalls and displays that I completely failed to see. I did whizz by the Alpaca Select one right at the very end of the day just when people where starting to pack up and pick up some more of the purple alpaca that I have been using for my mini crochet squares project:


I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't find the time to visit that area- or the one upstairs where the spinning displays where taking place. Having said that though it's is a good thing that I didn't find the Alpaca Select stall earlier- I love their stuff. It's the best alpaca that I have used and fills the 'soft and squishy' bracket 100%. The balls bands may be lacking in helpful details like tension/gauge etc but the weights of yarn they do are pretty straight forward (e.g. DK, 4-ply) and consistently fit to what you would expect of that weight stitch wise. It's the choice of colours though that really gets me. I asked the best friend to run and grab me some of the purple DK weight and she came back completely confused. I didn't understand until I saw the stall and realised that there were about 7 different purples to choose from alone.

The majority of my time was spent going around all the stalls in the marketplace. I turned up wanting lace weight yarn but quickly got sidetracked into other things. One stall had some great prices for undyed yarns. I picked up a skein of undyed sock yarn for £2.50 which seemed like a good bargain to me. I hadn't planned to get any undyed stuff but I figured that getting some kool aid sachets wouldn't be too hard and I could have some fun playing around with this one afternoon. They also had other undyed yarns and I pitched in with the best friend to get some aran weight yarn so that we can have a KAL on the Jayne Cobb hat. We both got a bit over excited to find that the other wanted to make this pattern the evening before- we had come to Firefly independently and at different times. It led to much squeeing. The original plan had been to buy dyed yarn in the right colours but we only found one stall with the right colours and it was over £5 a ball.We worked out that we would need a whole ball of each colour each and that the hat would thus end up costing us over £15 (each) to make. Eeek. So we bought undyed yarn instead as the best friend is on a bit of a dye kicking at the moment and wanted the fun of turning it all pretty colours.
One of the biggest draws of the day though was The Knitting Goddess stall. Both the best friend and I got sucked into this one and could have happily have stayed there for hours and hours. It was also the stall that broke us. We had originally planned to be sensible people and go round all the stalls first before making a purchase but this one just blew all that out of the water. They had sock yarn to die for! ~nom nom nom nom nom~ We were practically drooling. How I managed to restrain myself and only buy one skein of yarn I will never know:

This is one shop that I will definitely be revisiting! I have a funny feeling that they will be getting much of my sock yarn money for the next little while. I couldn't resist the yellow above. I was just so pleased to find awesome variegated yellow sock yarn.
Another shop/stall that was completely new to me was KraftyKoala. The best friend was drawn to it because they had plaits of roving in pretty colours and whilst she was browsing I spotted their selection of lace weight yarn. This was probably the best priced lace weight yarn that I found. I think I paid about £10 for the skein and it is approx 13oo yards which is great. The only down side is that it contains some silk so I had to remain deliberately ignorant on that point until after I had bought it- I just loved the colour so much I couldn't resist. It's called Mayfly lace and can be found here on Ravelry:

I was treated by a friend of mine to a skein of undyed alpaca lace from the John Arbon Textiles stall as a thank you for giving her a lift to and from the event. It is beautifully soft and fantastic at £5 for 1300 yards. I am going to be going to another show called Fibrefest in August that is being held at Coldharbour Mill in Devon (happily the parents live not all that far away so I can double up on things and see them as well as getting free room and board) and I know that John Arbon Textiles will be there as well so I will have a chance to buy some more of this :D

My final bit of lace weight yarn that I got is really the gem of the piece. There was absolutely no question as to whether or not I would be buying this- the second I saw it I knew it was destined to be mine:
The one other stall that I had really, really been looking forward to getting a chance to stop at was the Fyberspates one. I have been eyeing up their yarn over the Internet for ages and ages but had refrained from buying any as I wanted to have that experience in person and my-o-my was it worth waiting for.